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Facebook launches ‘Friends’ ad campaign in Toronto, Vancouver

They’re the people we share tender moments with, be it lugging a couch up the stairs to our first apartments, exploring a new city or dancing in the kitchen without a care.

Facebook has rolled out a new ad campaign, focusing on friendship. The slick ads — seen in Toronto during the Oscars, and plastered in the city's subway system (Wellesley subway station shown here) — are part of a regional campaign that also marks the company's first time advertising in the U.K. (Vince Talotta / Toronto Star)

They’re also the focus of a new ad campaign from Facebook, launched earlier this month in Toronto and Vancouver — the only two cities in North America to see the new ad spots — alongside a similar regional campaign in the U.K.

The televised ads are warm and evocative: Bridesmaids huddled together, shedding a few tears. 20-somethings on a road trip. Two friends in a fender-bender, two young mothers cradling their infants.

That’s all there is — no call to action of any kind — just these snapshots of friendship playing out over soft, instrumental versions of the Cure’s ‘Close to Me,’ Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer.’

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“Facebook is a place where friends go to make meaningful connections,” the company said in a statement. “This regional campaign celebrates those connections and the different kinds of friendship that enrich our lives both on and off Facebook.”

But why is this advertising push happening now? And why Toronto?

Marketing experts say Toronto, Vancouver and the U.K. may be just a testing ground for a widespread campaign, and a Facebook spokesperson told the Star other countries could indeed follow. Canada and the U.K. are both “natural fits” since they’re countries Facebook has been committed to for years.

Some say the compelling “Friends” campaign may also hint at challenges facing the 11-year-old social networking service.

“I think a lot of the legacy social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, are struggling right now to find the future of their networks,” said Ben Detofsky, managing director of Youth Marketing Connection.

But it’s a trend that may not continue if Facebook falls out of favour with younger demographics, both in Canada and around the world.

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Over the phone from his office in Washington, D.C., Detofsky noted how today’s teens see Facebook as a big family reunion where they’re posting under the watchful eye of parents and other relatives. There’s functionality to it — the network acts as a directory and a collaboration tool for group projects — but it’s no longer top-of-mind for younger generations who are now turning to platforms like Instagram, the photography app owned by Facebook since 2012, and Snapchat, a photo messaging app known for its ephemeral, shareable “snaps.”

An analysis by U.S.-based iStrategyLabs backs that up. The digital agency’s 2014 Facebook demographic report found three million teens had left the social network in just a three-year span.

Detofsky’s millennial-focused marketing agency has been following Facebook’s new campaign, and his team thinks it’s definitely an effort to capture this younger generation by strengthening the company’s brand and building an emotional connection with users.

Bhupesh Shah, a Toronto-based marketing professor, agreed that younger users are leaving Facebook in droves, but said the sentimental nature of the campaign may be targeting those in their 50s, or older.

“The ads are about creating and sustaining friendships. Who actually thinks about that kind of stuff? It’s the older generation,” said Shah, co-ordinator of the post-grad social media certificate program at Seneca.

Two of the song choices — from Madonna and the Cure — are targeting older parents, not their kids, he said. “I think they’re trying to increase loyalty to the brand, or increase market penetration that they can get deeper on (from that) older generation.”

Randall Craig, president of Toronto-based web strategy firm 108 ideaspace, said the campaign truly hits the right emotional buttons. And that’s important, he adds, given other challenges facing the company in recent years: Data privacy concerns, cyberbullying and the commercial nature of the platform that has rubbed many users the wrong way.

It’s also not the company’s first foray into traditional advertising. Some might recall Facebook’s first-ever television spot from 2012 that likened the social network to a chair. “Chairs are for people,” the ad’s narrator read. “And that is why chairs are like Facebook.” (It was widely regarded as a confusing dud.)

The new ads, in contrast, hone in on the “social” aspect of the social network, with a clear focus on friends as the heart of the service.

“We let their likes become our likes, and the things they share become the things we share. They challenge our point of view, push us out of what’s comfortable, and we trust them just enough to follow,” says a narrator in one of the new ads, a subtle reference to the likes, shares and follows of Facebook.

A spokesperson for the California-based company said the friendship-focused campaign, produced in-house, is running on the Facebook Canada page, Instagram, television, out-of-home displays like transit ads, and in print.

“They were wonderful ads, in terms of touching so many demographics and certain points of people’s lives, almost voyeuristically — I can picture me at that point in time,” Craig said. “And they’re winding it up in one package, saying, ‘This is what Facebook is all about.’ ”

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